Fatema Alzari was born and raised in Bahrain. She is a writer and illustrator with a background in law. Her studies were an entry point into embracing a wider understanding of systems not rooted in oppression and colonisation. Working with Indigenous groups and diversity for women, she is passionate about exploring the functioning frameworks of the human and more-than-human worlds for a healthier social ecosystem.

Fatema is multilingual, which is reflected in her poems—exploring identity through the lens of language. Growing up bilingual, speaking Arabic and English, it has created a unique sense of fragmentation and fusion of the self. During her immigrant years in Germany and France, she has accumulated a newfound understanding of what it means to belong and long to that which we perceive as home. Her poems usually explore themes around identity, relationships, and what it means to ‘grow up’. Most poems accompanied by printed illustrations, either on recycled paper, fabric, or glass. Whilst the work is digital in natural, which may create a barrier between the subject and object, the printed material is meant to be touched and explored. The intention is to emote a sense of delicacy, fragility, and vibrancy. Fatema’s work can be found in Sekka Magazine, Orangepeel Magazine, Bahr Magazine, and Liverpool Art Festival amongst other print publications.

The visual artwork takes a melancholic, yet also an ethereal portrayal of personal, social, and cultural subjects. Often using the natural world as a reference, Fatema seeks to portray the varying relationships between ourselves and our desires. Her writings also embody this tension between who we are in the moment and who we wish to be in the future. She categorises her work as paradoxical in its nature, oscillating between distinct ends of emotions and intentions. Fatema’s work is used to question our making of the world through language and metaphor. The accompaniment, or as she likes to put it “the twinning”, of what she intends to do is meant to create a holistic experience of a particular theme. Her goal is to create installations as unfinished inventories of fragments: sounds, objects, visuals—all guided by a question to the self and to the whole.
She is in the process of putting together her first bilingual poetry pamphlet, labelled “The Weeping Seeds”. Based on the Greek myth of Persephone’s abduction by Hades, the fruit of the pomegranate is a symbol of life, regeneration, betrayal, and love. The poems conjure encounters with her deepest desires to be loved, to be seen, to be protected—all which question the tart, tender, and unruly nature of growing up and healing our childhood fears.

The website including my work is to be released before summer.